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“In the US, we produce about 8.5 million barrels of crude oil a day. During Sandy, we’re likely to see demand reduced by 1-2 million barrels a day, and that final number will be dictated by the magnitude of the storm,” says Avery Ash, AAA’s manager of regulatory affairs.

Oil refineries in New Jersey and Pennsylvania have scaled back production in anticipation of the storm. But unlike Katrina, Sandy isn’t slamming a major refining region. Instead, it’s hitting the East Coast, which makes up a large portion of US demand but relies on refineries in the Midwest, or imported gasoline. “So you’ve got some supply issues, but in the longer term you’ve got ‘demand destruction’ bringing prices down. The question is when these two factors will balance out,” Ash says.

Most of the states that have the highest gas prices—California, New York, Oregon, and Washington—are Obama strongholds. And most of the states with the cheapest gas prices tend to be Southern and Romney strongholds, like Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Alabama…So while gasoline prices make for an easy line of attack in a debate or stump speech, it remains to be seen whether they will influence the election outcome.

Rick Newman, chief business correspondent forUS News and World Report, counters that falling gas prices in swing states could ultimately help the president, because they “have an outsized effect on consumer psyches.”

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Dear Reader,

This feels like the most important fundraising drive since I've been CEO of Mother Jones, with staggeringly high stakes and so much uncertainty. In "News Is Just Like Waste Management," I try to unpack the reality we all face and how we can rise to the challenge. If you're able to, this is a critical moment to support Mother Jones’ nonprofit journalism: We need to raise $400,000 to help cover the vital reporting projects we have planned, and right now is no time to pull back.